Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars fought during Napoleon Bonaparte's rule of France. They were partly an extension of conflicts sparked by the French Revolution, and continued during the regime of the First French Empire. These wars revolutionized European army and artillery systems. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe; the fall was also rapid, beginning with the disastrous invasion of Russia, and Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat, resulting in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France.

Military legacy of the wars

The Napoleonic Wars also had a profound military impact. Until the time of Napoleon, European states had employed relatively small armies with a large proportion of mercenaries that sometimes fought for foreign states against their native countries. However, military innovators in the middle of the 18th century began to recognize the potential of a "nation at war".

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Napoleon was an innovator in the use of mobility to offset numerical disadvantages, as he brilliantly demonstrated in his rout of the Austro-Russian forces in 1805 in the Battle of Austerlitz. The French Army reorganized the role of artillery in warfare, forming independent and mobile artillery units as opposed to the previous tradition of attaching artillery pieces in support of other troop units. Napoleon standardized the cannonball sizes to ensure easier resupply and compatibility among his army's artillery pieces.

Related Topics:
Battle of Austerlitz - Artillery - Cannonball

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With the fourth-largest population in the world by the end of the 18th century (27 million, as compared to the United Kingdom's 12 million and Russia's 35-40 million), France was well poised to take advantage of the 'levée en masse'. Because the revolution and Napoleon's reign witnessed the first application of the lessons of the 18th century's wars on trade and dynastic disputes, it is often falsely assumed that such ideas were the fruit of the revolution rather than ideas which found their implementation in it.

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Not all the credit for the innovations of this period should be given to Napoleon, however. Lazare Carnot played a large part in the reorganization of the French army in 1793-1794 -- a time in which French fortunes were reversed with Republican armies advancing on all fronts.

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The sizes of the armies involved give an obvious indication of the change in warfare. During Europe's last major war, the Seven Years War, few armies ever numbered more than 200,000. By contrast, the French army peaked in size in the 1790s when about 1.5 million Frenchmen were enlisted. In total, about 2.8 million Frenchmen fought in the conflict on land, and about 150,000 fought at sea, bringing the total for France to almost 3 million combatants.

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The United Kingdom had 747,670 men under arms between 1792 and 1815. In addition, about a quarter of a million personnel served in the Royal Navy. Totals for other major combatants are difficult to find, but in September 1812, Russia had about 904,000 enlisted men in its land forces -- meaning the total number of Russians that fought must have been in the vicinity of 2 million or more. Austria's forces peaked in number at about 576,000 and had little or no naval forces. After Britain, Austria was the most persistent enemy of France, and it is reasonable to assume that more than a million Austrians served in total. Prussia never had more than 320,000 men under arms at any given point, only just ahead of the United Kingdom. Spain's armies also peaked in size at around 300,000, but to this we need to add a considerable force of guerillas. The only other nations to ever have more than 100,000 under arms were the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Naples and Poland (not including the United States (286,730 total combatants) or the Maratha Confederation). Even small nations now had armies rivalling the Great Powers of past wars in size. However it is necessary to bear in mind that the above numbers of soldiers are obtained from military records and in practice the actual numbers of fighting men would be below this level due to desertion, fraud by officers claiming non-existent soldiers pay, death and, in some countries, deliberate exaggeration to ensure enlistment targets were met. Despite this there clearly was an expansion in the size of armed forces at this time.

Related Topics:
Royal Navy - Maratha Confederation - Fraud

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The initial stages of the Industrial Revolution had much to do with this -- it now became easy to mass-produce weapons and thus equip significantly larger forces. The United Kingdom was the largest single manufacturer of armaments in this period, supplying most of the weapons used by the Allied powers throughout the conflicts (although using relatively few themselves). France was the second-largest producer, arming its own huge forces as well as those of the Confederation of the Rhine and other allies.

Related Topics:
Industrial Revolution - Confederation of the Rhine

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Another advance which affected warfare was the semaphore system that allowed the war minister Carnot to communicate with French forces on the frontiers throughout the 1790s. This system continued to be used for the whole period of the wars. Additionally, aerial surveillance was used for the first time, when the French used a hot-air balloon to survey Allied positions before the Battle of Fleurus, on June 26, 1794. There were also advances in ordnance and rocketry during the conflict.

Related Topics:
Semaphore - Aerial surveillance - Battle of Fleurus - June 26 - 1794 - Ordnance - Rocketry

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